It turns out that on weekdays I am, mostly because I walk about three miles just getting to and from work. On weekends, I'm a slug who not infrequently doesn't even leave the house, so we see that, if for no other reason than my health, I must continue to work.
Interestingly, I noticed that last week, when the sidewalks were clear and my stride was unimpeded, I got just about 10,000 steps, and not much more.
We had a good snowfall over the weekend, and the sidewalks are once more the treacherous ice-covered surfaces I grew to know so well before the recent thaw. I find myself taking a lot of tiny mincing steps to traverse them without falling down--and I wind up with 12-13,000 steps on the pedometer.
I wondered if that actually means I'm working harder to cover the same distance, and I suppose it does. Most of the energy used to take a step must be in lifting the foot and moving the leg and body forward, and the difference between moving it forward four inches and moving it forward eight inches is probably minimal compared to the effort of taking a step at all.
Which leads me to propose my new Tiny Mincing Steps (TMS) Exercise Program. Double the number of steps taken daily by the simple expedient of imposing a risk of dangerous falls!*
I'm all set as long as the streets and sidewalks stay icy, but I'm clearly going to have to get some wobbly platform shoes for when the weather warms up. Anything that will make long strides hazardous is fine, I expect, but I may need to test several footwear styles.
I'll get to work on a research study proposal. The world needs to know about this.
*The necessity of going somewhere must be maintained, otherwise, to avoid the risk of dangerous falls, potential users might simply not leave the house. To be successful the TMS program must be fully integrated into the practitioner's routine daily interactions with the environment.
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